Debts of Gratitude

The usual claim made is all modern technology was 'invented' by the West - and 'Less Developed' Countries are either receiver of alms or 'stolen' technology. Cartoon by Dan Berger; famous for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Till the dawn of 20th century, the world’s largest producer of gunpowder ingredients was India. Indian alone produced double of what the Rest of the world produced.

The Indian monopoly was broken by Germany in 1915, by commercializing the Haber-Bosch process for production of ammonia.

Production technology of gunpowder ingredients was available in lakhs of Indian households across the country.

Every child was taught how to handle explosives – Diwali.

Around 10 years ago, Indian Government decided to convert India’s knowledge of medical items into a computerized database (TKDL).

With lakhs of entries, this database now runs into crores (more than 10 million) of pages. This knowledge of medicines was traditionally, given to every house, for their use.

Specialists, like doctors, were kept out of this process – except in rare cases.